Inspection spurs officials’ suspicion

A team of inspectors representing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be coming to Worcester this week to conduct a comprehensive inspection of the city’s sanitary sewer system.

The inspection process, which will take place Tuesday through Thursday, has city officials a bit leery, though; not because the city isn’t prepared for it or because there are major problems with the sewer system.

Rather, it has to do with the EPA’s track record regarding similar inspections in other New England cities.

Add to the mix the city’s rather tumultuous relationship with the EPA in recent years over a series of mandates the agency has forced on it. You can bet there was no exchange of Christmas cards, holiday cheer or Happy New Year greetings between the city and the folks at EPA.

All of which should make for an interesting few days in Worcester.

“Other communities that have recently undergone similar inspections have unequivocally stated that the inspection is aimed at finding fault, and not to assist, advise or be helpful,” City Manager Michael V. O’Brien said.

“This concerns me and it is my hope that the EPA will work with us to improve our sanitary sewer collection system for the good of our community services versus a directive to find faults and shortcomings,” he added.

Of course, one of the purposes of an inspection is to find shortcomings and make recommendations on how to make things better. So, that should come as no surprise.

But city officials firmly believe that EPA is going into the inspections with an agenda, so much so that Robert L. Moylan Jr., commissioner of public works and parks, has termed them as being “spurious.”

In fact, he fully expects that the inspections will result in an administrative order issued by the EPA against the city, and possibly even a monetary fine.

Geez, kind of makes you wonder if they’ll even shake hands when they meet on Tuesday.

When city officials were alerted by the EPA earlier this month that the inspections will be taking place — they will actually be done by an environmental consulting firm, PG Environmental — they immediately checked to see how similar inspections had gone in other communities.

As things turned out, similar inspections have already been done in Portland, Maine; Lawrence, New Bedford, Andover and Holyoke.

Mr. Moylan said what he found was that most of the inspections in those communities, except for Holyoke, resulted in administrative orders to the municipality, while some also resulted in monetary fines.

He said Holyoke’s inspection was recently done and, as a result, it is speculated that the EPA has not processed its findings.

Interestingly, Mr. Moylan said he contacted his colleagues in Portland, New Bedford and Holyoke who are responsible for their community’s sanitary sewer system. Describing each of them as “seasoned” veterans, he said each stated unequivocally that the inspection was aimed at finding fault.

“The EPA team was not interested in what the community was doing right, they were only interested in finding what they believe to be failings and stated the same,” Mr. Moylan said. “Given this history, I expect the same on January 22 (in Worcester).

“That is, a team of EPA inspectors will descend upon us to find and document faults in how we maintain and operate our system,” he added. “They will seek to record any and all maintenance shortcomings as a ruse to issue an (administrative order) and/or to issue a monetary fine.”

The commissioner has never been one to mince words when it comes to the EPA and he certainly pulled no punches in his assessment of the upcoming inspection.

When you have a sewer system as big as Worcester’s, it’s bound to have some shortcomings, especially since the system has nearly 350 miles of pipe, some of which dates back to the mid-1800s.

Add to that the fact that the city has 31 sewer pump stations, a combined sewer overflow treatment facility, numerous regulators, more than 27,000 manholes and all sorts of other system infrastructure.

“As diligently as we maintain and operate our vast (sewer) system, there should be no doubt that an experienced inspection team, directed to find faults and shortcomings, will indeed find them,” Mr. Moylan said.

Nevertheless, the commissioner said his department will be as prepared as possible for the inspection. He said his staff is assembling all the data requested by EPA, and it fully intends to share all its information, data and reports on the maintenance systems and operational plans with the inspectors.

“We will provide forthright and candid answers to their inquiries,” Mr. Moylan promised. “Nonetheless, I fully expect the net outcome of this spurious inspection to be an administrative order and possibly a monetary fine.”

Let the inspection begin. It should indeed be interesting, to say the least.